


let's not talk of love or chains, things we can't untie

by definitelyfinch



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: "is he turning into a nymph? a flower bush?", Canonical Character Death, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Season: Spring in Hieron, themes of disability, they're in love, they're in love and this time they're actually going to try and communicate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-11-28 20:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20972573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/definitelyfinch/pseuds/definitelyfinch
Summary: Samot knows what’s coming. He’s been relearning the cartography of his body, knows the ravine of morning glory along the dip of his waist, the purple flowers half-open in the hazy afternoon light. He pauses, waits, then speaks. “You,” Samot clears his throat, tries again, “you can touch them, if you want.”Or, Samot arrives in Aubade, hurt and aching and longing. This time, they're taking it slowly.





	let's not talk of love or chains, things we can't untie

He blinks, and the star shield blinks too.

Samothes feels it right away, the same way his father used to describe feeling all the inhabitants of Hieron like ants on his shins, each city a nerve ending, later a tumor. So long at peace, so unlike his father, Samothes chooses not to worry over the twinge. He does not fret over the flicker in the star wall around Aubade, but the blink resonates at the back of his chest, demanding attention.

When he sits down with his journal later, Samothes writes that the blink was like the sensation of a wall of tiles with one a slightly different color, imperceptible to the conscious mind but identifiable and namable by something deeper in the self. But this bright morning, now, he simply stands from his worktable and strolls to the balcony overlooking the majority of the island, the nagging sensation deepening with each footfall.

Blue rooftops, slanted sails, a breeze of spices. Peace.

Samothes turns and begins walking back to his table, glancing out the side window of his rooms. It’s then he sees the body on the sand, still and blooming.

He’s running before he reaches the bottom of the stairs.

\-----

It hurts.

It _hurts_.

It hurts so much it almost doesn’t hurt, the word the closest label his mind can procure at the moment but it’s like comparing a lantern to a sun, a sun forged by Samothes, _Samothes, where is he, he should be here, where is here, where is–_

He begins to raise his head, and the world flips again.

The star-stuff left in him burns. Someone’s sticking a finger in and pulling at the edges, there’s a hand around his heart, calloused and _tugging_, he has a heart left to tug out? It’s deep, deeper than he’s felt in eons, shells of isolation snapping in pulses under the pressure.

It _hurts_.

By now he should know how to think through the aching pain of a disintegrating self, but the Spring has wormed itself into him where the star-stuff used to reside, the presence somehow sharp, dull, thorned. He aches, each breath like fire in his lungs. Delirious with the pain, he rolls over, throws arm over arm in the warm soft gentle… sand. He’s lying in sand. The fall here seems to have stunned him.

Where was he last? That realm of death, what was it called – ah, Adularia. Cold dark burning shadows, but still solid. Now, he can’t make the surroundings form into anything, incompatible pairs of aching and comforting sensations, the thorns and the soothing sand refusing to cohere into reality. There’s shouting somewhere, near or far or maybe not at all.

Samot doesn’t remember closing his eyes.

\-----

Once, their son had wandered into an unused attic room in their house in the woods. It had been dark, Maelgwyn’s recklessness still explainable by youth and inexperience and not the utter disregard for his own safety he’d burned with on that fateful day. Confidence Alive, their bright sun, their foolish son.

Once, they had been together, all of them, and Maelgwyn had wandered into an attic room, dark and dusty and forgotten, and the door had locked behind him. It was night, and he had been sleepwalking, and in his disorientation he had mistaken the down feather insulation lining the attic floor for another bed. He’d curled his yellow head between two of the heavy wooden planks that framed the house and fallen back asleep, twisting and turning in the summer heat until the floorboards gave way under his weight with a _snap_.

Once, he and Samothes had been asleep in their bedroom across the hall. They had woken to a _thump _and a wail from the kitchen and rushed downstairs, Samothes’ robe undone, Samot’s own neck absolutely covered in bite marks, not yet altered by his morning reconfiguration of the wild mess down into a few tastefully placed bruises. Samothes reached the kitchen first, shoulders tensed in the way that would become so commonplace once he and Samot started fighting. Samot was not far behind, hackles raised like the wolf he was then not so far removed from.

Maelgwyn was crying, shards of the kitchen ceiling around him in chaotic patterns. Samothes rushed in to comfort him, to brush him off and sweep him into his warm embrace. Samot stared up at the dark hole in the ceiling and thought not of the Dark and the Heat but of how in _Hieron_ Maelgwyn had managed this particular sequence of events.

A few moments later, Samol had come in and shook his still-black braids at the sight of their family, Maelgwyn curled in his father’s arms, Samot kneeling behind Maelgwyn’s back, Samothes crouched strong and solid and stalwart and burying his face in his son’s golden hair.

The next morning, they took breakfast on the porch, and Maelgwyn tried to put words to the night before. _The sunlight makes everything clear_, Samol used to say, but something was lost nonetheless. Samot sipped his wine and listened to Maelgwyn and Samothes and watched the sun crest the pines from his place next to his husband.

“It just… doesn’t seem to fit together. I remember being in my room, and I remember being in the dark and I was so confused, but I was asleep, and I thought I was dreaming.”

“That makes sense,” Samothes nodded, the movement jostling strands of Samot’s long hair from behind his ear where it rested, pressed closed to Samothes’ shoulder.

“And when I fell! There was a second where everything just… froze? Everything went from being like a dream to being back to real…” Maelgwyn trailed off and turned towards his father, crooked smile wide.

“And then my butt really hurt!”

He took off into the house, yelling for his grandfather, his laughter carrying behind him on the sunbeams.

“I- Mael!”

Before Samothes could gather the fabric around his feet and pull on his slippers to chase after Maelgwyn, Samot reached a slender hand up to the edge of Samothes’ sleeve, pressure light and commanding.

“Let him go, husband.”

Samothes hummed low, settled back down onto the wooden steps of the porch, and Samot rested his head against his shoulder, golden hair draping over the ruby of his husband’s robe, the front open loosely despite the chill of the early morning air.

\-----

He dreams of his precious son, and his precious sun, and he thinks about the impossibility of naming the moment of transition, of pinning down the sensation of a world flipped upside down, and of falling without hitting the ground.

\-----

Samot wakes first to smoothness, then to coolness, where the warmth of the sand had been. Voices murmur in the background, and he breathes in slightly, feeling the awful tug along his torso where the largest star-stuff scars are… were?

He remembers the terror of that final moment, the Spring's overwhelming expansion within those patches of star-stuff he had designed to be impenetrable. He had seen his reflection in the black glass of Adularia, had seen the way the honeysuckle burst from between his eyes and down his cheek.

He tries to lift his arm to his face, to see what he can discern even with his eyelids feeling too heavy to open. His hand twitches but stays by his side, resting on top of the cool sheets.

Has he been given something for the pain? His mind certainly feels clearer. He concentrates and tries again, focusing on each muscle and nerve, the strangely-dulled ache of the Spring.

This time, his arm listens. His fingers are numb, but he feels along his torso to the edge of the silken sheets, over their folded lip and up onto his sharp collarbones.

Distantly, something clatters to the ground.

“He's awake! Get Lord Samothes!” _Samothes._ Footsteps rush out of the room and retreat into silence.

Samot lets his hand rest against his chest, body already feeling heavy with the pull of sleep. He floats down into the cushions and drifts, listening to distant waves and hushed discussions as if from atop a sky-stretched tower.

\-----

When his eyelids feel light enough and the sounds around him are appropriately near, he opens his eyes. The ceiling is a cool white. He thinks he hears the ocean. He turns his cheek towards the sound and finds an open window; the sky is a perfect blue. Something in his chest tickles, and he coughs lightly.

From his other side, a conversation abruptly pauses. Samot turns his head, and there he is.

Samothes.

The room seems to hold its breath. Samothes turns to face Samot, and his eyes are so much deeper than Samot remembered.

The doctor murmurs something to Samothes, but his gaze is fixed on Samot and thick with the weight of physicality, of being in the same room for the first time since – _no. _He doesn’t want to think about it.

There are light footsteps as the doctor leaves, closing the door behind them. Samothes does not move for several seconds. Then he starts to turn towards the door.

“No, I-” the words feel leaden in his throat. Samothes pauses.

“Stay. Please.”

He says nothing, only nods, and after a moment of hesitation pulls up a chair to sit next to Samot’s bed.

“Would you-?” Samot starts to lift himself up. Samothes’ hands shoot out to help but pause right before they touch Samot.

“I - may I?” Samot nods, and then Samothes’ hands are warm on his back, drawing out sensation everywhere they touch, reawakening sleepy nerves and creases in his spine. Soon he’s sitting up, and Samothes adjusts the pillows, then helps him lean back. Once he’s settled, Samothes moves to pull away, until Samot reaches out and presses a hand on top of Samothes’.

Outside, the waves roll against the sand. They stay like that, Samothes’ hands resting on the sheets with Samot’s own pining them gently in place. Samothes’ gaze is fixed on their interwoven hands.

The pale, tightly curled tip of a vine peeks out from beneath Samot’s ring fingernail.

From the window, the gentle crash of the ocean. A breeze. A breath, a warm exhale. Samot stares into Samothes’ dark eyes and tight lips and realizes that Samothes is _nervous_. Oh, how he’s missed this.

Samothes breaks the contemplative silence.

“I didn’t think you’d want to see me right away when you arrived, even after our recent conversation.”

“Still assuming my wants, then?” Samot bites back.

Samothes raises his gaze to Samot, his brow furrowed in the same way it always has when he’s angered, a dark crease overshadowing his visage.

Samot thinks of the last time he saw that furrowed face, how he turned and stalked away and rallied his army, and how he could see those liquid amber eyes so clearly when he crested the plains over Marielda and drove his conquering forces into that furrowed city.

But now, Samot recognizes a sadness in Samothes’ eyes tempering the familiar anger. Embarrassment rushes up his neck. Samot wants to reach up and kiss the furrow away, but he clears his throat, coughs a little.

“I- I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. Old patterns.” Samothes takes a deep breath and flips his palm up, intertwining his fingers with Samot’s.

It feels as if the Spring vines have crawled up his throat and wrapped around his chest. It takes several breaths for Samot to loosen them enough to speak.

“It’s just so much.”

Samothes nods. “A simpler starting place, then. Would you like me to stay with you here, right now?”

“That’s barely a question.”

Samothes looks meaningfully at him. Samot holds his gaze with a playful glare until he cannot anymore and the smile surfaces. He squeezes Samothes’ hands.

“Yes, stay.”

\-----

Each day in Aubade, Samot learns something new about his husband.

It’s slow, but they finally, finally have time, in a way that they didn’t even in the halcyon days before the Erasure, before Samol took ill, before what they had crumbled into missed glances and unsent letters and bloodied aegises alone on the red-stained plains.

They’re lying on a divan in Samothes’ rooms when Samot first mentions his old city.

“I renamed it the City of First Light.”

“And what was wrong with Marielda?”

“I named it after you.”

If he catches Samothes off guard, he doesn’t show it, his hand continuing its gentle trails down Samot’s knotted and knobbed back.

A breath.

His next words are calm, the tone flat and thick.

“Did you.”

Samot only nods slowly, the side of his face moving up-down up-down on the silk pillow. Samothes lets out a shuddering breath, heavy like fog.

Samot lies still, breathing shallow in the way he’s learned to minimize the tug of the Spring’s blossoms around his lungs. He can feel the tension radiating from Samothes’ hand as it rests on his left shoulder blade.

A breath.

Out.

Samothes takes another breath in, wet this time, and Samot flicks his eyes up to see tears running down Samothes’ russet cheeks. He rolls over, pushing through the twinge along his side to pull his husband down gently onto the bed next to him.

Samothes presses his face next to Samot on the pillow, his hand hovering over the curve of Samot’s hip, barely touching, fingertips tracing circles in the dimpled flesh. He sniffles, and the image is so unlike the dignified and haughty Samothes that Samot remembers from the war that Samot feels his green-laced cheeks twitch at the sound. Samothes’ hand moves up towards his waist, still light as a feather, almost ticklish, not daring to caress as he used to.

Samot knows what’s coming. He’s been relearning the cartography of his body, knows the ravine of morning glory along the dip of his waist, the purple flowers half-open in the hazy afternoon light. He pauses, waits, then speaks.

“You,” Samot clears his throat, tries again, “you can touch them, if you want.”

Samothes’ hand slows.

“I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have.”

A wet laugh bubbles up from Samot’s chest, surfacing with an exhale.

“I know. Believe me, I know. Just… trust me.”

He feels Samothes’ nod through their shared pillow, their breaths mingling in the sacred space between their bodies. His husband’s hand relaxes onto his iliac crest, the pad of his thumb rubbing ellipses into translucent skin.

They wake that evening to vines from Samot’s cheek tangled in Samothes’ beard, and it’s been oh so long since Samot heard his husband laugh like that. 

\-----

_Step, step._

_Click._

_Step, step._

_Click._

They walk in the market arm in arm, the tip of Samot’s cane tapping along the cobblestones, his right arm hooked in the crook of Samothes’ elbow. Even now, the high tide of his arrival a couple weeks turned over into the low tide season, people notice them, and something in his flower-crusted stomach turns at the implication of people looking at him when he’s like this.

_Looking at you when you’re like what? _Samothes presses him one night.

Samot knows they need to talk more than they used to, really talk, but still bristles at the question.

_They look at me like they pity me! They see what I’ve become, how I’ve been marred by all of this!_

Samothes answers by running his warm hand along Samot’s flushed visage, tracing the perfect arch of his cheekbone interrupted in the middle by a violet. His fingers brush lightly over the petals, then down to Samot’s lips, and he pulls Samot in for a kiss.

When they part, Samothes shakes his head slowly.

_You are as beautiful as the day we first met, husband mine. We have both changed since then, and that change is what led you back to me. I wouldn’t have you any other way._

The market bustles around them, the people of Aubade going about their day. The sun is bright and high in the sky, the smell of cardamom on the breeze. Walking with his husband, he commands an aura of leisure. People smile as they pass, drawn by his godly allure, his carriage, the hair that now flows down around his shoulders.

He’s grown more accustomed to his changed physicality. It seems his body could only tolerate so many alterations. First shadow made material, then material made godly, godly pierced with Ordennan steel, steel with star-stuff, star-stuff with the Spring. Sometimes he wonders if this is how Hella must have felt after he reconfigured her so many times in their fight against the Advocate.

Still, there is nothing he can do but work with his new self, the good days and the bad days and all the days between. Today he’s up and about – a marker of a good day, so far. Regardless, he’s still easily exhausted. Samothes recognizes this.

“A rest?”

He nods, catching his breath as he pauses to readjust his grip on the golden handle of his cane. If Samothes notices him relying a little more on his arm for balance as they approach the park, he does not say anything, sparing Samot that small indignity.

The little voice in the back of his mind, which sounds surprisingly like Samothes these days, reminds him that it is nothing to be ashamed of. He shouldn’t think of these changes as shameful, he shouldn’t, but he spent so long in Hieron working to stabilize the world, moving things towards an always-shifting final equilibrium so he could rest, comforted by the ultimate denial of the Heat and the Dark. It was never a tireless pursuit – that was the domain of Samothes, and later his son, and the Exarch after him – but his repose had a purpose.

Now, he sits down gingerly on a bench surrounded by anthurium blossoms, his knees sighing in relief. He wonders if there is a perfection in this newfound symbiosis, the balance he did not anticipate but has found regardless.

The Unbroken Lord in Exile and Repose, indeed. The largest wound remains open these months later. He thinks it will remain open.

The people of Aubade have begun adorning their faces and bodies with flowers, perching hibiscus blossoms to snake out from under necklines and hems.

Samothes squeezes his hand, and together they watch the ocean wash over the sand.

**Author's Note:**

> "I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm  
Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm  
Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new  
In city and in forest they smiled like me and you  
But let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie  
Your eyes are soft with sorrow  
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye"  
— Leonard Cohen, "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye"
> 
> find me on twitter @definitelyfinch


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